Law-abiding gun owners are not the problem

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POSTED:January 29, 2013 1:00 p.m.

We had heard that there was a shooting recently at a theater in which an off-duty officer felled a gunman.But we sure had a hard time tracking the case down in the “mainstream” media.The reason: The incident avoided a tragedy, and the media don’t find that interesting, and the hero in the story was armed and used her gun to prevent loss of life.And that’s a story that doesn’t fit the “mainstream” media’s current “guns bad” narrative.The case occurred Dec. 16 in San Antonio. A gunman in an apparent romantic rage shot at a crowd in a mall restaurant, then chased people over to a theater complex. There, security guard and off-duty Bexar County sheriff’s Sgt. Lisa Castellano drew her weapon and fired, incapacitating the gunman and likely saving lives.Again, the media don’t want that spread around too much, because it proves that legal weapons in public places can be a good thing.They’re pretty useful in private places, too.An intruder picked the wrong Walton County, Ga., house to break into earlier this month. Melinda Herman was home with her twin 9-year-olds — but she wasn’t alone. When the man knocked and rang the doorbell insistently, she huddled with her kids in an attic room — armed with a .38-caliber gun. For some reason, the intruder wouldn’t stop until he found them, and she shot him repeatedly. She and the kids escaped to a neighbor’s, while the attacker — parolee Paul Slater — escaped temporarily before being found and hospitalized.The media have been less able to ignore this case, as it involves a young mother defending her cubs.But it’s more evidence that gun control only endangers law-abiding citizens; criminals, by definition, don’t follow laws, including gun laws.That doesn’t stop gun-control forces from trying to disarm the public. Indeed, it required two separate rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court to finally establish Americans’ inviolate right to self-defense. Even after the high court struck down the Washington, D.C., handgun ban, the city of Chicago clung to its ban on something of a technicality: hoping that it could disarm its law-abiding citizens because the Second Amendment doesn’t apply to cities.The high court ruled it does – but only by a perilously close 5-4 decision. After a few more Obama justices, where will our Second Amendment rights be?And what did the handgun ban do for Chicago? It ranks among the cities with the most shootings in America.Again, that’s because criminals don’t pay attention to the law.But if the city leaders of Chicago had had their way nationally, Melinda Herman would have been defenseless against that intruder — and heaven only knows what might have happened to her and her children.Nothing good will come of disarming the good guys.